Woke Casting Ruins Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’

February 2, 2026

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Hollywood simply cannot help itself. For years, these privileged elites have spewed angry, hateful, profanity-riddled, self-righteous rants against President Trump and the MAGA movement, driving American audiences away from theaters into the arms of streaming alternatives like Angel Studios which don’t insult their values or sucker-punch them politically. Thanks to industry-enforced DEI requirements, blatantly woke casting has added another layer of offensiveness to viewers.

A disappointing but entirely predictable example of this is the revelation that filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Oppenheimer) reportedly has cast black actress Lupita Nyong’o as legendary Greek beauty Helen of Troy in his highly anticipated, $250 million IMAX adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, set to open July 17, 2026. Nyong’o is an Oscar-winning actress, some point out, so why is this a problem?

Her acting talent is not the issue. The problem is the painfully obvious DEI casting of a black woman as an iconic queen of ancient Greece.

Lupita Nyong’o was actually confirmed as a cast member a year ago, but it was uncertain whether she was playing King Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, the goddess Athena, or some other character. Now it has been confirmed she will portray “the face that launched a thousand ships,” as Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe put it, and sparked the Trojan War. She is right for none of those roles, for the simple reason that the ancient Greeks were not black Africans; nor were their gods and goddesses.

The social media backlash to this news was swift and withering, but some of Nyong’o’s and Nolan’s defenders noted that she is an exceptional actress and beautiful, so the only reason to object to her casting must be racism. But the undeniable fact is that ancient sources such as Homer’s other classic, The Iliad, the Greek poet Sappho, and playwright Euripides describe Helen of Troy repeatedly as “white-armed,” “fair-haired” or “golden-haired” and “fair-faced,” referring to the classical female ideal of pale skin and blonde hair. In addition, Helen’s beauty is described as supernaturally devastating. She is not merely the most gorgeous woman in the world – as a daughter of Zeus, her radiance is literally semi-divine.

Another common defense of Nolan’s casting goes like this: Helen of Troy was a mythical figure, not a real person, so there is nothing historically inaccurate about depicting her however Nolan chooses.

But there is such a thing as respecting the integrity of the original story. Filmmakers working with an existing intellectual property, whether it is the James Bond franchise or Homer’s Odyssey, have a choice: they can commit either to the racist identity politics of DEI or to the creative integrity of the original story. Both James Bond and The Odyssey are fictional creations, but the race, sex, and sexual orientation of their principal characters cannot be altered without tearing asunder the fabric of the original artist’s creative tapestry.

Violating story integrity is also a guaranteed way to alienate the built-in audience which is the very reason Hollywood executives prefer adapting existing IPs rather than taking a chance on original material. Rumors that Nolan’s Odyssey would feature warriors in historically inaccurate armor were enough to send prospective fans into a tailspin; the casting of Nyong’o as Helen will only turn off even more potential viewers. This is not an instance in which controversy will be good for business.

Storytelling suffers when what poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief” is shattered by a jarring casting choice like an African Helen of Troy, and when characters are reduced to cardboard vehicles for the promotion of a political agenda. No one in the audience is well-served when filmmakers revise the past, even the mythical past, to spread the lies of today.

But the self-righteous virtue signalers in Hollywood can’t help themselves, as I wrote above. In recent years they have thumbed their collective nose like this at audiences numerous times. A black actress was cast as Henry VIII discard Anne Boleyn, who was undeniably white; but if you pointed out that casting a black actress would make the project distractingly contrary to historical fact, then you were smeared as upholding white supremacist culture.

A black actress was cast as the titular lead in an historical Netflix drama Queen Cleopatra. The scholarly consensus, however, is that the Queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC was of Macedonian descent, with the prominent aquiline nose common among the Romans and Greeks. No serious scholar argues that she was a sub-Saharan African.

I’m a big fan of black actor Idris Elba, but his casting as the Norse god Heimdall, guardian of Asgard, in the Marvel Thor franchise was simply laughable. The Norse gods were even less black than the Greek gods.

Bisexual black actress Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) was cast as Jesus in Hollywood Bowl performances of Jesus Christ Superstar. Does anyone think that was anything but intentional provocation of Christians? (Does anyone believe the producers would have cast her as the Muslim prophet in a production of Muhammad Superstar?)

And on and on. We all know what the Left’s reaction would be to the casting of white South African Charlize Theron in a biopic of Rosa Parks, or Aussie star Hugh Jackman as black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, or inexplicable heartthrob Timothée Chalomet as Sammy Davis, Jr. There is no point in making this obvious counter-argument, because Leftists are impervious to accusations of hypocrisy; they simply don’t care. They would simply counter that early Hollywood spent decades “whitewashing” minorities by casting white actors to play, for example, Chinese detective Charlie Chan, so now social justice demands that we reverse-discriminate against whites.

(The Left is also impervious to complaints that discrimination against whites is still discrimination. They know that, and they are fine with it because the Left equates whiteness with evil.)

By casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen, Nolan and Universal Studios are signaling that their political messaging and affirmative action preference takes priority over the original material and over the moviegoers themselves, who deserve a film that doesn’t insult their intelligence and shove wokeness in their collective face. As Elon Musk put it, “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity.”

Chris Nolan has lost his integrity

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2026

Let Christopher Nolan and Universal take note: Algemeiner correspondent Corey Walker tweeted a message that surely speaks for literally millions of expectant moviegoers worldwide – myself included: “Already ruined the film for me. People are tired of woke casting.”